All Forum Posts by: Wesley W.

I think the point was that all of that information was meticulously placed in the ad with care by the landlord for prospects to be able to use and make decisions on prior to taking up someone else's valuable time by requesting the information already provided.

Our local HA (not sure if this is consistent throughout the US) requires landlords to offer a one year lease to any Section 8 voucher recipient.  Since we only offer MTM leases, we cannot accept any section 8 tenants due to that requirement.  My response from inquiries regarding Section 8 is something to effect of: "Unfortunately, our lease does not conform to Section 8 requirements.  Good luck in your search!"

A question I ask on our application is, "do you currently have enough funds available to pay all move-in costs?  (first month, last month, security, pet fees if applicable)"

It sure saves everyone a lot of time.  Before I put this in, I can't tell you how many songs and dances I heard when I asked for the move-in costs after approving a tenant based on income and other factors.  They looked good on paper, but the problem was they couldn't close and I wanted to rent the unit.

I'll admit it really cuts down on the amount of applications I receive, but the "signal to noise" ratio is much more favorable for my time invested.  Decidedly fewer applicants, but I only hear from people who have their act together.  If they don't have all this cash ready to deploy for their move, I really could do without them and their future aggravation caused due to money mismanagement.

He was asking for a friend.

(Under your profile settings you can change it so just your last initial shows up rather than your full last name.)

 As others have stated, in some jurisdictions once a person establishes your property as their residence (e.g. 30 days, mail received), whether or not you were aware or gave permission as stipulated in your lease, they get full tenant rights under the law.  So, now add to the time and expense of an eviction the fact that you have to serve notice to and collect a judgement against someone whom you have little information about, quite possibly not even their legal name.

Perhaps move this part of your portfolio to the other PM.  Could it be that the PM is a jerk, so they alienate applicants during/after a showing (thus, no apps) as well as existing tenants (eviction, absconding)?  If the rest of your buildings are running smoothly, I'd say the only common denominator is that TBT PM.

Another idea is to send a "secret shopper" to go through the tenant onboarding process on these vacant units.

Yet another is to see if you can reach out to your remaining tenants (under the guise of a customer satisfaction survey, for example) to see if they can shed some light on it.

I may be misunderstanding the laws, but I believe as long as you are not declining them based on being a protected class (discrimination) or something discovered on the background checks (FCRA, in which case you would have to send an adverse action letter), you can decline them for "not being a good fit."

I would decline them, and if pushed you can just say that you seek to create win-win, positive relationships between yourself and your tenants, and you feel that would not occur in this case.  Wish him well and good luck.

I typically do not remove snow off of my flat roofs in the area, except on one property where the insulation is poor at the eaves and ice damming occurs along the gutters.  In that case, I broom off (sharp shovels on rubber roofs is just asking for trouble, I think) the first 6 feet or so if the snowfall is more than 8 inches or so.

I'm not sure who would do that for you if you wanted to hire it out.  I find it very hard to find any reliable people that will do any property maintenance outside of the PMs, and they charge a premium that your gross rents in Troy might not be able to support.

Good luck!

@Raman Bindlish @Alex M. There is an option in Zillow to "Hide Property Address in Listing" in the ad profile for your rental.  It's a box you can check or uncheck.  The Zillow affiliates (Trulia, HotPads) also do this.

I believe there is an option to hide your address from respondents.  If you've done it correctly, when you get an email response, the subject heading will be "John Smith is interested in Address Not Disclosed."

As others have stated, I do not post any pictures of the exterior of the property, and only disclose the address once a dialogue has begun with a prospective renter that has completely answered the qualifying questions posted in my ad.